BattleTech: Restoration
by tsureai
Summary: Exiled for unspeakable crimes, the eldest daughter of House Ramey was run off the planet with a gun, a bag, and a mech. 10 years of bounty hunting, cartel assassinations, and mercenary mayhem later she's ready for her biggest contract yet. This is a novelization of the HBS Battletech campaign. Starting in the year 3010, follow one mean merc in her battles across the Periphery.
1. Chapter 1: Mommy's little monster

(( Authors Note - This story contains spoilers for the Hare Brained Schemes Battletech campaign. This story also contains chemical weapons, re-education camps, and depictions of warcrimes as contained in the campaign. You don't need to know the lore inside and out to read this story, but it helps. For instance, the main characters is Canopian. ))

 _ **You are of noble birth. Though immigrants to the Aurigan Reach, your family soon established a comfortable presence in a small, backwater system on the edge of Aurigan space. By the time you were born, your family House Ramey had become the de-facto ruling nobility of the system's only inhabited planet. Rockwellawan may not be much on the galactic scale, but it is yours.**_

 _ **You are the oldest female child, heir to House Ramey's titles, businesses, and ancestral Battlemech. While you always longed for something flashier, you cannot help but enjoy piloting the elderly Blackjack. The world simply feels /right/ when you're striding over your lands like a living Titan of steel, the peasants like ants in their fields. Even gravity can't hold you down!**_

 _ **And somehow that makes you very, very /wrong/.**_

 **Mommy's little monster -1**

 **Rockwellawan 3010**

The wind swept cool and crisp across the vast fields of soyghum, the waves of sweet cane making a distinct rattle as the nearly ripe bean pods brushed against one another. That was good. As long as she crawled in time with the wind, sound of her passage was obliterated by the loud crops. Whatever centuries past geneticist that designed the hybrid crop had probably never included their suitability as cover as a design goal, but they'd succeeded admirably none the less. Not that it was hard to hide a twelve year old. Harriette's goal was a dilapidated farmhouse, and the greenery provided her safe passage right up to the back porch.

A canvas sling across her chest secured the reason she had crawled through the kilometer of cane field to her back. Riding high across her back was a chunky laser pistol, a lacquered wood stock added on. It was her mother's Sunbeam laser pistol, and Harri wished it was designed for a young girl's frame like hers. She had to continually adjust it to keep it from catching on things or digging into her as she slipped between rows of cane to her goal. The star league could design entire planetary ecosystems, yet not make a laser carbine that fit comfortably on a twelve year old girl's back.

On closer inspection the farmhouse was a worn out prefab, the windows mostly broken out and the polymer walls flaking off in scales. Harri recognized the hexagonal layout of a standard shipping container easily. She could scarcely believe anyone would call such a shack home. That same wind that had covered her progress brought her the smell of the place. Someone burned cane mash inside to fuel a stove, the sweet smelling smoke wafting from the chimney pipe a vaguely pleasant accent to a lovely day.

If she'd thought to carry a thermos of tea with her it would have been the perfect spot to plot the downfall and ruin of her family's enemies. It was sort of… snug in between the rows of cane. Comforting like a good quilt on a chill day. Harri had been to the sea shore regularly, and the wind blown rattle of the cane had the same soothing effect as waves crashing on the seashore. She wished she'd been able to simply take her skimmer right up to the traitor's door, but they'd hear the howl of its lift fans far before she arrived. So instead Harri pondered a bit on just how she should proceed with this threat against her family.

Harri's mother had long profited in the lawless frontier stars unclaimed by any nation. Some might have called her a crook or thug, but they were long since buried and an empire built on their bones. Deceit, ruthlessness, and a well deserved reputation for strong armed deals had server Lady Donna Ramey well. Not many could claim to own a small fleet of jumpships, nor a monopoly on the mines of entire worlds. It was only proper that her house ruled the world they owned a controlling interest in.

Her family ranch sprawled as far as the eye could see and was well supplied, with a working combine harvester that charged off a scrapped Wasp torso in the mech barn. The same source that recharged the power cells in the Sunbeam pistol she carried. All of that was little more than scenic background to the real wealth of the Ramey family, interstellar transportation, but it allowed them to cement their hold over the world. The combine alone let them plant and harvest far more acreage than most. Steady power let them process not just their own cane juice and edamame, but those of their neighbors and servants as well.

Envious servants like the swine Fa Zeng Li. Swine that were too stupid to learn a simple lesson: Don't bite the hand that feeds. And people wondered why she preferred a loyal dog to a treacherous peasant. Her House had taken him in, gave him a job maintaining the combine and air cars. Yet this is how he had repaid her kindness. She did not yet know why he had poured a cup of sand into the engine housing of her family's aircar. Perhaps it was banditry pure and simple. Perhaps it was but a prelude to a more vicious crime. A crime that she would prevent today.

She crawled through the final rows of gently swaying soyghum and took a few deep breaths as she contemplated how best to get answers. Mother Donna would no doubt just set the whole house on fire and never worry about the consequences. Mommy Danni, of course, would object to such an impromptu swine BBQ and possibly even withhold her allowance for a month as punishment. No doubt while pinching her ear and yelling at her about the importance of using words. It would be the breakfast in bed Mother's Day incident all over again. Well fine, Harri had a few choice ones for traitors.

"Fa Zeng Li! You stand accused of treason against House Ramey! Come out with your hands up! Or be roasted like the swine you are…" Hmmm… Perhaps she shouldn't have added that last bit.

The reaction was immediate, though not in the form she had expected. Harri supposed even peasants weren't stupid enough to stick their heads out the window like piglets to the slaughter. Someone tried to run through the rear door, but she fired through the thin planks as soon as it began to move. The smoking hole showed little evidence of a hit, but the blood curdling screams that began from behind it trailed off into wet retching sobs. She began to move as swiftly as she dared along the lines of ghum cane, seeking a new vantage point. Her caution was vindicated when a couple of shotgun blasts raked the crops behind her, the crushed and sheared stalks releasing an intensely sweet scent as their sap splashed all over.

Porcuswine were at their most dangerous when the prickle was enraged, and an unwary hunter could find themselves most painfully dead if they didn't keep moving. Harri had seen the bodies of more than one ranch hand who'd fallen prey to the beasts they were supposed to be herding, flesh ripped from the bone and meter long quills impaled through what hadn't been eaten. To everyone's surprise but her own she was a natural hunter. She'd shot her first porcuswine boar when she was nine, the impressive penetration and lack of recoil of the laser allowing the feat. Anti-material terminal effect was a requirement for getting through the dense hide and thick quills of the aggressively defensive creatures. Compared to stalking something that could smell you coming a kilometer away, this was too easy.

Her scurried path through the cane gave her a new angle on the house, and she could see someone reloading a shotgun with steady hands through the window. Mottled camouflage clothes, face hidden behind a helmet, he screamed professional to her danger senses. He was already turning to bring the shotgun around to her new position, without hesitation. Someone used to killing, like her. The Sunbeam was already up and the world shrank to a dark tunnel as she aimed down the sights and pulled the trigger without any hesitation of her own. She shot him under the shoulder, as mother had taught. Shoot for the heart.

The Sunbeam laser pistol was a heavy and ungainly thing. When she had been smaller she couldn't even lift it one handed, so her mother had made a stock for it that let her shoulder it like a carbine. The wood stock snuggled against her shoulder like a kitten, a welcome comfort. It wasn't the only gun on the family ranch, but it was her favorite. The high intensity beam and near silent operation made it ideal for hunting, compared to the loud blast of a gyroslug carbine. The only thing more dangerous than a stampeding prickle of porcuswine were those that hunted them.

The helmeted man's clothing flash burned, the halo of flames obscuring the charred meat and bone that replaced once healthy lungs and heart. He had nothing left to cry out with as he fell dead, a few wisps of greasy smoke curling from his lips his only epitaph. Harri kept moving, circling around to the front of the shack as the screaming inside reached a new crescendo of shrill terror. It sounded like a woman, or perhaps a young enough boy.

Her small, silent feet brought her around the front of the shack, just in time for her to see the front door begin to move. In her rush she shot too quickly, the beam moving in a brief arc barely below knee height. God favors children and fools, and in this case she was both. There was a thud heard just below the screaming, whoever she'd just wounded falling hard but aware enough to scrabble back inside. A smoking shin and sandaled foot still remained on the front porch.

Her small hands clutched at the weapon with white knuckled intensity as she tried to steady her aim with slow breaths. The screaming continued for what felt like forever, testing what nerves Harri had left. Wouldn't she ever shut up? The wailing dug bloody furrows into her ears, so raw was the suffering that was given voice. The first hints of regret started to bubble up in her mind. How many people were in that dirty hovel? How wide was this cabal of treason? That man she'd killed had a shotgun. No one local bothered with shotguns, they only enraged the feral hogs. She should have at least told the guards where she was going. And it was so HARD to think with that damnable screaming going on. There were words mixed into that cacophony, unlike the terrified squealing of a crippled porcuswine.

For the sake of her own sanity, she needed to end this. Her feet pushed her forward, out of the cane. Up to the front porch that once belonged to a servant, now home only to charred meat and conspirators.

As soon as she neared the door something flew towards her, a blur of motion to her tense eyes. Her finger moved before her brain could make sense of what she saw, the flash of luminous violence so close now that it blinded her. She staggered backwards, trying to crouch down against the wall as she blinked away tears and spots in equal measure. What she had seen caught up with her. A woman with her leg seared off reaching out to her. And the sun bright flash that she fired into her breast in response. The open door brought a breeze through the shack, the mingled odors of sweet ghum juice and charred flesh reminding her that she'd missed lunch.

At least it was quiet now.

She stepped over the latest corpse into the shack, finding a man in grimy overalls trying to shield a girl even younger than Harri behind his body. It seems her shot through the door hadn't had enough power to take his leg off, though the burn was deep enough to cripple him. She kicked him in the leg until he turned to face her.

"Fa Zeng Li, just the man I wanted to see."


	2. Chapter 2

_**Decades ago, your family came to the Reach from the Magistracy of Canopus.**_

 **Mommy's little monster -2**

 **Rockwellawan 3007**

It was Mother's Day for nine year old Harriette Ramey, and she'd gone to great lengths to make sure it was a memorable one. For the last week she had painstakingly researched the perfect breakfast in bed for her parents. For the last week she had gathered up all the utensils she'd need as discreetly as possible. The plan this morning was for her mothers to feast on only the freshest of scrambled eggs and sides. At the crack of dawn, she'd awoken and snuck out to the shed where her gear had been stashed. The plastic plate armored jacket was far too large for her, but the extra long sleeves worked equally well as gloves to protect her delicate hands. The hog prod was fully charged and discharged with a bright snap of blue sparks and a most satisfying crackle. As she pulled the helmet visor down and clipped it to the jacket, she was ready. Those hens were mean, and the bastards had long ago learned to go for the face.

Half an hour later Harri staggered back into the kitchen, coughing as she set the basket of precious eggs down before she leaned heavily on the counter. The chickens had damn near taken her head off, the chin strap from the helmet the only thing that had kept them from her soft, tasty eyeballs. Unfortunately, that same strap had been pulled on so hard it had nearly choked her. Harri silently vowed that the next time she saw something flying at her out of the corner of her eye she'd shoot first and ask questions later. A tall glass of melon juice later Harri felt quite refreshed, the cold nectar soothing her throat. The hardest part of her planned menu was taken care of! That meant she could dispense with the armor and get to the rest of the ingredients. For almost all the other ingredients she'd have to settle for what was already in the pantry. Almost.

Behind the main house was a small pen, nestled up in the shadow of the mech barn. While porcuswine could grow to several hundred kilograms they don't start off that large, and it was rare for them to get their quills in before they were a year old. With enough effort they could be trained, somewhat. Trained to the point where they could be kept as pets certainly. Harri had some edamame in her pockets as she trotted out to the piglet pen, and the more alert of the piglets were already rousing to the gate as she approached. There were three in the pen at the moment, two of them nearly just weaned, pink little bundles of wiggle that swarmed to her when she entered the gate. But Harri had only eyes for Wilbur, her prize piglet that she'd been hand feeding for the last 2 months.

Wilbur walked up to Harri and nuzzled her gently, his warm noise at her waist making her giggle happily. She held out a few of the green soyghum beans in the palm of her hand for him to eat, scratching behind his velvety ears as he ate. The hardest part of getting Wilbur out of the pen was keeping the other two greedy little piggies in at the same time. Eventually she got the gate closed with all the piglets in the proper position and led Wilbur over to a watering trough. He didn't mind getting wet, quite the opposite. The sixty pound piglet oinked happily as Harri gave him a quick bath in the sun warmed water, a soft brush and her own hands making sure he was squeaky clean.

Wilbur didn't need much coaxing to come inside, the kitchen was close enough to the pen that the smell of dinner and lunch often brought the piglets to the fence. His oinks and snorting as he explored the kitchen were amusing to Harri, but she had a breakfast to make. This Mother's Day it was only the best, and for that sacrifices must be made. Harri slipped her hand into her jacket pocket and pulled out the small pistol she'd borrowed from the lock box under her parent's bed. Like every native of Rockwellawan she'd learned to shoot at school, but she wasn't very familiar with this particular holdout gyroslug pistol. She took a moment to make sure it was loaded, checked the safety and the cocking indicator, and then carefully lined up a shot at the back of Wilbur's head.

Gyrojet weapons were at one point in time the cutting edge of small arms technology. Instead of bullets the ammunition for them was more akin to miniature missiles, with minimal recoil despite the heavy explosive projectiles. Legend has it that at one point in time they even made smart bullets that could hit people around corners. Rockwellawan centuries ago had been host to the 1st Brinton Defenders, and small arms factories to support them and the Department of Mega Engineering facilities they were guarding had been setup. Those factories had long since worn down, to the point where they best they could produce were the far more primitive and "quirky" gyroslug weapons.

The anti-hog slug Harri fired at Wilbur was designed to achieve maximum velocity roughly two meters away from the muzzle, the stubby barrel only really being used to give the mini rocket enough spin to travel straight and keep hot rocket gasses from blowing back at the shooter. Harri shot her fattened piglet from less than a decimeter away, her grip was a mess, and on top of all that she flinched when she pulled the trigger. She was lucky to hit Wilbur at all given the circumstances. Wilbur was not at all lucky, as the gyroslug creased his shoulder, lodged in his shank, burned there for a split second, and only then exploded.

Sufficient to say at this point that the plan for breakfast was well and truly shot to hell.

* * *

Danielle Tempest-Ramey often had regrets over the choices she'd made in life. She'd been young and easily impressed by shallow things, and as far as possessions go entire worlds were hard to beat for being impressive. When she'd married, she'd been blinded by wealth, sly words, and the tingle of danger that came with the handsome noblewoman who was courting her. Back then the Ramey Cartel had operated on the simple and efficient principle of "We have guns." vis-à-vis "They don't." She'd tried her best to fix her spouse, to polish some of those rough edges on what she knew in her heart to be a diamond beyond compare. To some degree it had worked, and House Ramey had become a legitimate mercantile operation.

But it hadn't worked enough. Danielle had given House Ramey what it had wanted the most, a female heir. Danielle had doted and fussed over her adorable blond baby to her hearts content, but it didn't take her long to begin to worry. Little Harriette had three older half brothers, and they had picked on her mercilessly when they could. Any normal little six year old girl would have gone running to her mothers when her favorite doll was torn in half in front of her by her eldest brother. Harri had waited until her brother was asleep, and then started beating him with a lamp. It had taken poor Donald a week to see straight again.

Danielle knew her spouse was prone to violent rages if pushed, and after years with her she'd mapped out all the buttons that lead to those outbursts. It wasn't right for Danielle to feel that same thrill of terror when she held her own daughter in her arms. She'd tried her best to show Harriette the right path, to teach her how love could be stronger than hate and violence. Harri even seemed to be picking up some of it. It wasn't until that horrid Mother's Day breakfast that Danielle realized just how badly she'd been wrong.

Danielle's eyes flew open as a raw, shrill screaming echoed up from the ground floor. It chilled her to the bone to hear such pain from a child, and she hurriedly threw on a robe as she rushed downstairs. Her worst fears were realized when she saw a trail of splattered fresh blood and tiny footprints in it leading from the kitchen. Danielle's heart nearly stopped when there was a loud BANG! of a gunshot from the den. The screaming stopped, and in the resulting silence she could hear laughter.

The den had the coppery offal smell of a slaughter house, a porcuswine piglet messily dead on the floor from a bullet to the neck. The poor beast was missing a leg as well, only a tattered, mangled stump remaining. Standing over it was Harri, her pajamas sprinkled with bits of flesh and blood. She had a steak knife in one hand, and an absolutely miserable expression on her doll like face.

"Dani! Dani guess what?" Donna laughed as she gestured at the mess of pork with one hand, a derringer in the other. "Harri," Donna wheezed, her laughter too hard for her to continue for a moment. "Harri was making us breakfast in bed! She was trying to make bacon!"

Danielle was speechless for long minutes, just watching her daughter becoming so frustrated and ashamed she started crying. When the words came to her, they seemed the only ones possible. "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name," Danielle started praying.

* * *

 **Rockwellawan 3010**

No one ever accused Lady Donna Ramey of having good taste in decor. Embezzlement, perjury, corruption, cover ups, and having small hands? Yes, all those crimes and more. Her personal study made it pretty clear that crimes against style should be added to the list, as it looked like a cross between Caligula's bathroom and Louis the XIV's bordello. Marble tile and columns were everywhere, but pride of place and opulence went to a gold and silver starmap inlaid on the far wall. It covered not only the Frontier and the Reach, but significant portions of the Concordat, Magistracy, League, and Confederation. Looking at that map, the ignorant might be forgiven for thinking that Rockwellawan was the center of the known universe. Donna liked to say that it helped her keep perspective.

Donna just wished her wife would get some. In almost every way, Danielle Tempest-Ramey was Donna's polar opposite. Decades of high speed cargo runs had left Lady Donna with the countenance of a bulldog wearing a wad of yellow cotton candy, her jowls usually emphasized by a perpetual scowl. Danielle was a full seventeen years younger than her spouse and still had a face that had launched rather more than 1000 ships. She'd been a famous, or perhaps infamous if you didn't share Canopian morals, star of a renowned pleasure circus before settling down. Fourteen years ago, when Danielle and Donna had first met, Danielle had been the most desired sex symbol in the rimward Inner Sphere.

And right now, Danielle was coldly furious as she slammed a folio of photographs down on the desk. "Have you seen this! Have you seen what she did this time!" She panted, a moment away from hyperventilating. "I… I mean… That poor woman, literally shot to bits!" She collapsed into one of the overstuffed chairs, pulling up her knees and rocking herself back and forth. "Why… Why is Harriette like this? She's just twelve, a little girl! Not some god damned Spartan, sneaking out to kill peasants." Her soft slate gray eyes began to tear up, and she smeared them across her smooth cheeks with a careless wipe of her hand. "Why can't she be normal! She should be playing with makeup, or teasing boys."

Donna calmly flipped through the photos, though she'd already seen them before. The House guards had gotten involved very quickly, and Donna had personally inspected the scene. "This one wasn't a peasant." She said, pulling out a picture of the man her daughter had lung shot. "No one's ever seen him before around here. He never came through the spaceport either. That helmet he wore had sat comm capability, along with optics built in that border on losttech. He's probably a bounty hunter, or maybe an assassin. They're the ones who bribed Li to sabotage our aircar, although I have my own staff asking him some pointed questions to confirm his story. I also have someone looking into which dropship he might have been working with."

Donna flipped the picture around to show it to Danielle, a photo of the unknown man with his helmet off, his face slack in death. "Regardless of how… rough her methods were, she wasn't wrong. Harri saw a threat and she acted on it. We're all safer now for her actions. That makes her a Knight, not a Spartan."

Danielle took one look at the dead man and began to sob, hiding her face in her hands. "She's graduated from piglets… She's killed people! PEOPLE DONNA! Gunned them down with that damned laser! My god, what might she do to her brothers now? To US!" Her sobs came so fast she began to hiccup and cough, sure signs of an incipient hysterical fit.

Donna hated to see her wife crying like that, and she rose from her seat to brush her hair from her tear streaked face and rub her back gently. "There there," she said gently. While Danielle may have been the loveliest of the Tempest sisters, she was far from the most resilient of her lineage. She was a spectacular hot house flower, a beautiful orchid that captivated every eye in the room. It was just a pity she was so damn needy sometimes. Those tears couldn't be doing anything good for her crow's feet... "She needs help, obviously. She needs some structure and discipline in her life. We can hire someone to put her energies towards more productive tasks."

Donna's little black book had a number of hardened killers that she could call to teach little Harri how professionals handled traitors. Not everyone from the old days had been willing to trade in a gun for a suit.


	3. Chapter 3

_**This is where you met Raju "Mastiff" Montgomery, a veteran of the Succession Wears, whom your parents hired on to train you as a MechWarrior. Raju was a strict but capable teacher, and you quickly became a skilled pilot under his tutelage. Raju was perhaps the first person outside your family that you truly respected.**_

 **Ch 3 Mommy's little monster -3**

 **Rockwellawan 3010**

At twelve years old Harriette Ramey was lanky and awkward, just at the end of being a child but not yet developed into a woman. On old Earth her ethnicity was called Slavic, with the high sculpted cheeks that had captivated Czars. Around these parts she was just called Lady Ramey. Her brilliant gold hair stood out, a clear inheritance from Mother Donna Ramey. She was also well on her way to inheriting Mommy Danielle's interstellar class beauty. After four centuries of continuous operation, the pleasure circuses of Canopus boasted beauties who were in a league of their own.

Regardless of how Harri came by it, her build was petite to put it mildly. She was small for her age, and tiny by the standards of humanity at large. But as the old saying goes, it's not the size of the dog in the fight that counts, it's the size of the fight in the dog. At that moment Harri felt like she could conquer the stars all on her own. Her bright yellow hair was pulled back in a tight bun, a mottled military cap holding it tight. It hadn't been easy to get a mechwarrior cooling suit put together for her, but Mother settled for nothing but the best. Her cooling vest even had a matching pair of short pants, with a built in holster for her mother's Sunbeam laser pistol.

Exactly how mother had obtained the weapon over years of mercantile adventurism and privateering was a story she was cagey about spilling. Depending on who was being told and how much she'd had to drink it changed. Sometimes she'd challenged an angry Scotsman to one on one melee combat for it. Sometimes she'd traded swine and beans for it. Whatever the price, it was well worth it. Nothing on Rockwellawan could make a gun remotely like it. Harri made it a point to keep it with her at all times until the current situation was resolved.

Whoever had hired the assassin was still at large, and despite very competent efforts Mother's staff had never positively identified which dropship had smuggled the man down to the surface and been in contact with him. Part of Mother's solution to the increased threat level was to hire a mercenary to train young Harri. She met the man for the first time in front of the mech barn behind the main house, after spending a half hour making sure every part of her uniform was pristine and not a hair out of place. He was… distasteful in her eyes. He looked every bit the frontier thug, with what appeared to be a very poorly done tattoo across half his face.

"Mastiff… That's some kind of dog isn't it?" Harri said as she walked up to the hired gun. "Mother whistles and you come running." She looked behind him, at the Centurion mech standing beside the barn that housed her own Blackjack. She could see streaks of rust on some of the armor plates, and one deep gouge in the plate over the arm where something inside was bleeding rusty rivulets. "You have good taste in mech's at least, but it seems your own is rather short of House Ramey standards. I'll expect you to adjust the pedals so I can reach them while you're having it refitted."

She had been expecting a lot of things from her new teacher, but finding herself painfully folding up around a fist to the belly she hadn't even seen coming wasn't one of them.

The first thing to run through her mind was just how much it HURT to be hit like that. Never in her entire life had anyone dared raise a hand against her! Her breath exploded from her body as the fist impacted her solar plexus with surgical precision, sending waves of agony through her body. Harri would later swear that her feet left the ground, and that Raju's punch had sent her flying. Certainly, that was the second thing to cross her mind, that she was falling and her body refused to let her do anything about it. Then she hit the ground and stopped thinking entirely for a while.

When she came to the bright sky filled half her vision, and that warrior's face filled the rest. This close she could see the marks were scars, not ink. "First lesson: big dogs don't bark," he growled. "They bite." Raju stood up, looming over her. "I've worked for a lot of lordlings, puffed up petty nobles with fancy toys. Only concerned about keeping their mechs shiney for parades. You can always tell their type by the spit and polish they insist on everywhere." Harri tried to get up but her belly muscles screamed, and it was all she could do to not vomit all over herself. "Weak. Lap dogs," Raju said with a sneer, expressing his contempt by spitting on the ground.

"Your mother tells me you're different, that you got the same gumption she had back in the day. An attack dog. A killer like us." He looked down at Harri, squirming in the dirt. "Right now, you're a puppy, barely opening your eyes to the way the stars really work. Your whole life up to this has been one boring peaceful day after another, eavesdropping on the help just for something to do. The truth of things is simple. Peace is an illusion and only exists because the dogs of war like us enforce it." The grizzled warrior extended a rough hand down to Harri, to help her to her feet. "So what are you, pup? Nothing but bark? Or will you show me your teeth?"

* * *

Harri ran harder than she ever had in her entire life, her legs burning like fusion fire. The deeply rutted, unpaved road was bad enough to traverse in a car, but she was running along it on foot after a late morning rain. Her uniform was no longer pristine, or indeed even recognizable as covered in mud and debris as it was. She'd fallen so often and hard that the slimy muck had even managed to get past her brightly polished belt and into her pants. But none of that was the worst part. No, that by far was the gods damned helmet.

Harri had very quickly learned that they didn't make neurohelmets in tween sizes. The training neurohelmet Raju had shoved on her head was every bit as big, cumbersome, and heavy as the real thing. The straps holding it on as she stumbled along the slippery road dug in painfully to places she hadn't realized she had. The weight tugged at her, threatened her balance at every moment of every step on the treacherous terrain. She couldn't even look down to see where she was placing her feet.

Her foot slipped in the slick mud, and Harri took a tumble yet again. Her arms were too weak to catch herself in time, and she landed face first into the soupy earth she'd been running across. The heavy helmet dug a furrow into the ground, but at least it kept her face clear of the worst of it. She took a minute to catch her breath, muscles screaming as simply staying still started to hurt as much as running. It was dark in the submerged helmet, but that just gave her plenty of opportunity to appreciate the sound and smell of her own panting.

A hand closed on the back of her vest, Raju's grip casually yanking her up to her feet again. Somehow he'd effortlessly kept pace with her, shoving her in the back every time she'd tried to slow down. Literally pushing her forward. "Not bad…" he commented, his breath infuriatingly level. "You'd be amazed how many hotshot Mechwarriors can't keep their OWN balance, much less balance a mech running across broken ground at flank speed."

Harri couldn't gather enough breath to sufficiently curse him. She'd never felt so POWERLESS before, and it wasn't a sensation she was enjoying. It seemed this battle scarred old hound was better than her at literally EVERYTHING. She'd tried to strike him back, after he'd dared lay hands on her at their first meeting. But nothing ever worked. He seemed to consider her efforts to punish him some sort of game. She wiped the mud from her faceplate and realized at some point that she'd started crying.

"Awww, is the little princess going to run home to her mommies?" Raju taunted. "Gonna put on your silk pajamas and wish this was all a bad dream?"

Harri took a ragged breath and shook her head inside the dank helmet. With a groan she was thankful he couldn't hear, she started forward again. Like hell she would give some peasant that satisfaction.

"Good girl!" He laughed, handing her a canteen. "By the time I'm done, you'll be hard as coffin nails. Just like me."

* * *

Danielle Tempest-Ramey looked up as the door to her suite opened, for a moment blinded by the hall lights flooding in this late at night. Was Donna finally coming to bed? Well she'd show her what was more interesting, sales drafts or a warm b… "Harri?" For a moment Danielle's blood ran cold. What the hell was she doing here this late at night? Oh god, she didn't have the Sunbeam did she? Danielle held her breath, trying to bottle up her fear. She was half convinced her daughter could smell it.

Harri didn't cut a particularly imposing figure, not standing there in the door wearing fluffy pajamas. Her hair was still wet from the bath, and bandages showed here and there where she'd skinned something in a fall. Danielle knew better and gripped her rosary tight as she prayed for her continued safety.

"Mommy?" Harri asked, her voice worn and tired beyond measure. It was a tone Danielle could barely remember ever hearing from her. She loosened the grip on her rosary, and sat up in bed, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the light.

"Yes Harri?". Maybe, just maybe, that mercenary was already having a positive influence on her troubled daughter. A mother could always hope, right?

Bare feet padded on the thick carpet as Harri trotted over to her Mommy's bed, hopping up onto the thick mattress. "Mommy, what do I do when I feel helpless?" she asked softly as she crawled up under the covers with the more approachable and socially adept of her parents. As much as she loved her elder mother, Donna's response would certainly be some variation of grow stronger and crush your enemies.

Danielle felt her heart catch in her throat, and she reached out to pull the small, frail child to her breast. For a moment she just held her, like she was a normal daughter with normal fears about the big bad world. "There are a lot of things you can do," she replied after the long hug. "If it's something we can help with, just ask us. But I get the feeling that your problem is a little more complicated than just needing a new skimmer." She tickled Harri under her chin, and that normally dour face lit up with a smile and a laugh.

"So do what I do," Danielle said softly, "When there's something no one could possibly do for you. I pray. I pray to God for the safety of my family. I pray to God for the prosperity of our little planet. I pray to God, for you." She reached up to her own neck, gently lifting the rosary she always wore over her thick blonde tresses. It was something she'd bought on tour, supposedly from Terra itself. And now, she placed it gently in her daughter's hand.

"God has watched over us for thousands of years. God's followed the light of our souls even when we go faster than light, all the way out here. God listens to the intentions of our hearts, in the secrecy of our own souls. You don't need to use a lot of flowery language, or all that. God is God, and already knows your desires anyway." One soft hand closed over a small one, holding tight the rosary inside both. "Now, let us pray."

Danielle closed her eyes, and prayed with all the fervor and faith she could muster. ( Please God heal my child. Remove this taint of evil from her soul! )

The experience was… not unpleasant for Harri. This didn't seem to be a very logical way of going about solving her problems, but it couldn't hurt. Certainly, it seemed to make Mommy happier. (I pray to you God, to strike down Raju Montgomery with all your wrath and vengeance. He's an asshole. Amen.)


	4. Chapter 4

**_"A battle scarred MechWarrior with nearly 40 years of combat experience, Raju Montgomery was born and bred for combat. In addition to mercenary work, Mastiff has served as the Master-at-Arms for a number of noble Houses, training their scions in the arts of war."_**

 **Mommy's little monster -4**

 **Rockwellawan 3012**

Harri never felt more alive than when she jumped. Her Blackjack, old as it was, could casually sneer in the face of God and Sir Isaac Newton. With that familiar, deafening roar the jets fired up and launched 45 tons of metal into the air with all the grace and precision of a mortar shell. General Motors had packed plenty of thrust into the design, but precious little aerodynamics. The only thing keeping her from a painful, messy death was her own skill in nailing the landing. A skill she'd honed to a fine edge under the tutelage of one man.

"Mastiff, why do they always run?" Harri asked as her mech landed at a jog along a road that was little more than a swine path in the scrub woods of North Corundum. "I mean, these guys might have been miners for all we knew. If they'd just kept their cool and let us inspect their trucks, we would have sent them on their way."

The brush grew thick and heavy out here, and Raju's Centurion was struggling to keep up with her frequent leaps over the worst of the tangle. Running full tilt through the woods was dangerous for even mechs. A pilot could never tell when a patch of solid looking ground might turn out to have been a soupy hog wallow.

"I think your reputation precedes your Harpy." Raju chuckled over the comm. "You think you can take the wheels off that truck? Or do I have to step in?" He might be falling behind, but he could maintain a target lock from his students telemetry for days.

Harri took to the skies again, this time landing a bit higher on the slopes of the valley they were chasing the truck along. She took her time, bringing the reticle over the fast moving truck. There were really a lot of things that you had to calculate when trying to pull off a shot at a moving target that small. Windage, lead, position… The sharp double CRACK of her cannon's firing came as a surprise as she pulled the triggers.

A second later she saw sparks flash across the nose and cab of the truck, proof positive her shot had hit. She was pretty sure she'd seen something fly out of the far side of the trucks cab, but the engine brewed up into a smoking pillar before she could really be sure. "Well… It's not rolling anymore." Harri said with confidence over the radio. It irked her that she'd been a little high. "You coming Old Man?"

Harri didn't wait for a response and instead lit off her jets once more, launching herself back down to the road where she could sprint without having to worry about tripping on a boulder. It was reckless and dangerous but, like the whole mission, it was good training. The local rangers weren't up to dealing with anything more dangerous than a feral chicken flock, the horse mounted lawmen only keeping an eye on the "pirates" jumping claims and stealing silver ore.

That in itself was suspicious. Who steals ore? They're just rocks, any pirate worth their salt would have hit the smelters for refined silver bars. It was only after research and chemistry homework that Harri discovered that silver ore was relatively high in germanium. And all the major powers needed that to build and maintain jumpships. Mother was less than pleased when the thefts began and declared that she and Raju would undertake a training mission to the wilds of the Silverload Valley and put a stop to it.

As Harri jogged up to the smoking vehicle she confirmed she had well and truly put a stop to this particular truck at least. At least one occupant of the cab had splashed out the far side and into the brush lining the road. The engine had stopped smoking, but only because whatever fuel had been in it at the time it was perforated had burned away and it had no power to pump in more. "Anyone alive in there?" She asked over the loudspeakers, switching to thermal imaging to try and pick out body heat.

As she stalked back and forth around the truck like some sort of curious metal dinosaur, Raju finally arrived. "I got nothing else on sensors." Harri called out over her radio, "Cover me Mastiff, while I search the bodies." She didn't wait for a response but instead began the curiously precise dance of unbuckling and wiggling that allowed her to leave the cockpit. The last thing she did before exiting the upper hatch was to sling her gunbelt low on her hip and grab the spare helmet hanging behind her chair.

The helmet was a souvenir, recovered from the still nameless man she'd shot two years ago. Mother never had figured out who had been bankrolling him, but the helmet was a miracle of tech and served Harri well. It almost fit once she'd had extra padding installed, and provided plenty of room for her braided hair. Like every other part of Raju's harsh training, Harri had complained at first about the weight of all the armor she was made to carry every time she left the cockpit. But that had stopped the first time she'd stumbled on a flock of chickens while dismounted.

From his Centurion, Raju watched the petite form pop up atop the Blackjack. A thick blonde braid swung around from beneath that old sneak suit helmet she'd gotten from somewhere, the only really feminine trace left to a figure bulked out by cooling vest and body armor. There was pride in his ragged smile as she ignored the ladder and quick rappelled down the rear of her mech. She'd be no easy target for a guerilla marksmen like that.

Raju had few things in this world to take pride in. He had no family, and fewer friends with each passing year. Attrition was high in his line of work, and no woman in their right mind would want a man who was married to his mech first and the contract second. As much as he wished to take pride in his Centurion he could not. House Ramey's barn may not look like much, but the technicians inside were skilled enough to repair 10,000 ton dropships. To them a Mech was an amusing weekend project and Old Glory had never been in better shape.

No, there were more personal things he could take pride in. His martial skill and killer instinct, which had brought him to the attention of Lady Donna originally. His physical prowess, which had earned him the attentions of Lady Danielle in a way he had not been expecting. And now? His protege. Harriette Ramey was, beyond any shadow of a doubt, one of the most remorseless killers he'd ever come across. It had been weeks before she'd stopped trying to stab him from his blind spots. Every time she'd tried to kill him, he'd beat her down harder. Eventually she'd finally folded and accepted that she could learn from him, regardless of his backgrounds and appearance.

In a lot of ways she was like the kukri blade strapped to his thigh. She simply didn't care who or what she wounded, as long as she got the chance to cleave. He'd put a good working edge on her so far, teaching her not just mech combat but every form of warfare he knew. Out here in the wilds, those skills would be polished to a razor's edge. "Watch your angles as you approach!" he called out over the speakers. "Remember, slice the pie."

"My memory is better than yours Old Man," Harri grunted as she came slowly around the foot of her mech, keeping her pistol trained on the truck. She'd still never admit that he had more experience than she, especially when it came to dismounted actions. On his advice she'd expanded her weapon selection to include a vibro blade and a stun baton. She didn't have the upper body strength to drive a metal oar through a skull like Raju could, so the powered assist was vital.

When she came up on the cab of the truck she gave a low whistle. One of her rounds had punched through the door, the driver, and the wheel clear through to the far side. Bits of all three had been blasted all over. The passenger side door was open, and she could see bloody handprints where someone had wrenched it open to try and escape. She already knew what she would find as she moved to inspect the other side. There was simply too much blood for them to have gotten far.

Thermal imaging had shown her the rapidly cooling outline of a man. As she got closer she could see where part of the steering wheel had embedded itself in the man's ribs. She was frankly surprised he'd gotten this far with a wound like that. She holstered her pistol and drew her blade, using it to cut her way to his pockets and then cut away his clothes as she searched. "Ok, we have… Jesus, they're not even trying to hide who hired them. He's got a few Bulls in his wallet." Harri pulled what was left of the driver out of the cab and looted the dead man's pockets too. "I got a picture of a man and a woman, the woman in TDF uniform. Best ID we'll get on this poor bastard."

She took a few pictures of the dead man's face, and the tattoos both had as well. Mother might need that to track back which ship he'd arrived on. Certainly not a Ramey lines vessel. "You know… It's a wonder there are any actual, factual pirates at all out here. Mom used to tell me stories about the dread pirate Robert and his water raids. That was a classy pirate who left no survivors. I mean sure, these guys were stealing stuff. And technically, they're pirates. But they're clearly some sort of Taurian deep raiders." Sighing she started to walk around to the back of the truck.

The man who leapt out of the back of the truck when she opened the door was probably as surprised as Harri was. He'd clearly been expecting someone taller, and instead of tackling her to the ground he very nearly went over her head entirely. Raju's training had been brutal, and before she was even certain of what had happened she was rolling and drawing her pistol. Only to have the dirty man's hands close over hers and try to yank it away.

Harri's wrist screamed at her as she held on to the Sunbeam for dear life, but she held it and the man's attention long enough. Long enough for her to grab her stun baton with her left hand and shove it in the bastard's groin. She screamed as she jabbed him again and again with the baton, until it solidly connected and dumped enough electricity into him to have him screaming as well. He curled up like a dead bug on the ground, and Harri vindictively jabbed him with the crackling baton a couple more times to make sure he stayed down.

Panting Harri sat down roughly, pistol in her lap and trained on the man. "A little WARNING next time!" she yelled up at the Centurion, her radio taking her complaints up to Raju. "You move and I'll goddamn kill you." She spat at her prisoner. "And once a CERTAIN OLD MAN gets his ass down here, we will have a long, _painfully_ detailed discussion on why you were locked in the back of a pirate's truck."


	5. Chapter 5: Interlude: Fairy Tales

" ** _Until the day after your sixteenth birthday, when..."_**

 **Interlude: Fairy Tales**

 **Rockwellawan 3014**

* * *

Canopian pleasure circuses have a universally bad reputation outside of their own nation's borders. Sure, what happens on Canopus stays on Canopus, but people didn't quite know how to act when a slice of Canopus showed up in their hometown. On some worlds, small minded puritans would picket outside their pavilions while more cosmopolitan nobles arrived in limo tinted air cars. On others, the spontaneous orgies in the stands were a real problem that the local nobility avoided with VIP seating.

Shiri couldn't remember a time in his life without the circus. He was too young to remember begging at the Helmsdown starport or catching the eye of some of the carnies as they refueled their dropship. Shiri had been born eye catching, with a glorious mop of flame red hair. Now, there's no truth at all to the rumors that carnies kidnap children. Shiri had no family to kidnap him from, and no one to care that there was one less street orphan when the circus launched.

With regular feeding, grooming, and gymnastic practice, Shiri bloomed into an amazingly lovely boy. The circus took him in, treated him as one of their extended family. For a boy who'd grown up on the taste of ash dusted quillar loaf, it was a dream. No deprivation, no hardship, more opportunities than he could have ever imagined. Quite a few people said that he might be the next Stormy, a member of that very circus who'd had the fairy tale ending and married into the nobility.

So Shiri paid attention in class when they went over the kama sutras, how to act with grace and poise and above all else allure. In time he forgot that childish dream. After his first few times performing for nobles he realized how hopeless it was that any would take him for a husband. To those who own planets, he was at best a passing amusement. Until the stars and planets and fates all aligned, and that fairy tale ending was dangled in front of him.

Danielle Tempest-Ramey, as old Stormy was called now, had invited the circus to Rockwellawan for a special performance. It was her daughter's sweet sixteenth birthday, and to celebrate in style she wanted the very best pleasure circus to show the girl a good time. It was an offer they could hardly refuse! Not just one eligible princess but her three older brothers would be attending as well! Shiri wasn't alone in squealing with delight at the prospect!

When the night of the performance finally came Shiri poured his heart and a couple other organs into it. And to his surprise, Lady Ramey the younger bodily pulled him to her suite. In the hallways they'd been giggling like school girls, until the door closed behind them and she threw him to the bed. He'd been with men who were forceful in their passions before, but he never expected to be manhandled by a little slip of a blonde princess. He found it… quite exciting.

When the pretty dresses fell to the floor Shiri discovered why she was so strong. There wasn't a spare ounce on her, it was all corded muscle. He'd seen mechwarriors before who weren't this fit. He'd also had a bit of experience bedroom wrestling before, but the submission hold she rapidly put him in was both new and frightening. Perhaps because of that he gave the encore performance of a lifetime.

It was only afterwards, when the pleasure was fading to a muted tingle spiced with very specific soreness, that he found out she actually was a mechwarrior. Pillow talk over ice rum was as big a part of the service as what had come before, and Shiri learned a great deal about young Lady Harriette as the hour grew late. How she loved jumping fences in her skimmer. What it felt like to kick in the jump jets of a BattleMech.

With a few shots under her belt, she offered to show Shiri her Mech. They threw on enough clothes to be halfway decent and snuck out giggling to her private speeder. They chatted along the way, and Shiri was intrigued by this odd duck princess. She took him to a huge barn, which looked like it should be holding hay or cows from the outside.

Inside it was clean concrete, and space for a few mechs. Only one was present, but it loomed imposingly over everything. "That's BJ." Harri drawled to him. "That's my mech. All stompy!" She took a swig from the ice rum and drunkenly pointed over to the small hovercraft parked to the side. "But that's the real fun one! WAY faster. VROooooom!"

She hopped into the seat of the skimmer and started to fire up the engine. Shiri had a couple shots in him already, and had another as he slid up in the seat behind Harri. His slim arms were held snug around her waist, pressing him firmly against her hard body. He egged her on, nibbling on her ear as the fans on the skimmer spun up to a growl and the craft began to move.

The skimmer was fast and loud, just as Harri had promised. Shiri whooped out loud and hung onto her hips as she gunned the engine and started jumping it over fences. Even drunk she threw the little craft around with skill and bravado, slaloming over harvested fields and animal pens. Until a water tank suddenly loomed out of the night and the skimmer rocketed up to avoid it.

Shiri tumbled off the skimmer, slamming into the water tank with a wet crunch as his legs shattered. It was perhaps some small bit of luck that he passed out immediately from the pain. Unconscious we would never realize that he'd fallen into a porcuswine wallow. Unconscious he would never feel that sickening moment of betrayal when the skimmer didn't slow in the least.

Shiri would never do a lot of things anymore, because his fairy-tale ended there.


	6. Chapter 6: Sweet Sixteen

**_(( A/N: I'm not sure if this fic really needs an additional warning, but this one is violent by any standard. ))_**

 ** _"Until the day after your sixteenth birthday, when you were sent out on your own. Once the promising young scion of your family, you committed a number of unforgivable transgressions. You are banned from your inheritance, and are exiled from the planet."_**

 **Sweet Sixteen -1**  
 **Rockwellawan 3014**

* * *

Harri hadn't had a hangover this bad since Raju's going away party. In fact, it might very well be the worst hangover in the history of the planet. Rockwellawan had only been colonized for 250 years, so it was possible. It felt like someone was screaming in her ear while a thousand forks stabbed her in the back, butt, and thighs. "Uuuugh," she grunted, eyes cracking open enough to take in a little light through gummy lids.

She turned her head and blearily focused on one of the downstairs maids, the flighty woman screaming from the doorway a couple meters away. "Shutup!" Harri whimpered, her ear now suffering from that stabbing fork pain. She reached up to touch the side of her head, and found that it was indeed a fork jabbing her in the ear. Huh. She removed the offending silverware and stared stupidly at it for a moment as a draft blew her loose hair around.

"Why was a fork under her head?" She wondered as she looked down. She had apparently fallen asleep on a table. She reached under her thigh and removed a relish and salad fork. That would explain a few things. But as she looked around it only raised more questions. For example, why was her skimmer parked next to the table? How it had gotten there was fairly obvious once she raised her throbbing head and looked over. She'd driven it through the wall of the conservatory.

It was clearly too early to be worrying about such minor details, and a bone deep ache pulled at her consciousness. So, she stumbled over the debris and plates she knocked from the table as she made her way over to the living room and fell asleep again on a couch.

As she slept on the couch she dreamed of Mommy Danielle. She'd dreamed about her MILF Mommy before, but not quite like this. She started off amused, then grew worried, and then began screaming and sobbing at her. Loudly. Her hangover turned into a migraine as the screaming grew into piercing stabs of pain, and her body was shaken violently. At some point Harri began to suspect that this was less a dream and more someone waking her up again.

This unpleasant suspicion was realized when Mommy Danielle dragged her to her feet and pulled her through the hallways to the infirmary. It wasn't much of an infirmary honestly. The tables and machines had been taken from a scrapped dropship from the House Ramey fleet. On the gurney was a form swathed all over in bandages, tubes leading all over the place. Mommy ranted on and on while Harri stared dumbly at her, too tired and pained to make any sense of the words.

The red hair that spilled across the pillow looked somewhat familiar.

Mother entered, and Harri tried her best to hide how weary she was. It was a struggle to make out anything of the dressing down she was given. Words like "responsibility", "privilege", and "honor" seemed to factor heavily into it. Honestly, the only part of the speech her throbbing brain could comprehend was Mother saying "I expect you'll take care of it." That at least simplified things. Mother only said that when there was someone she needed dead.

It took every bit of effort she had not to collapse into a seat until her parents left. It was really a pretty comfy chair. A vague, distant memory of Mommy sitting here singing to her while she recovered from the periphery pox started to lull her to sleep. She hurt all over, her bones aching in time with her pulse and the throbbing in her head. She'd just started to drift to sleep when something beeped loud enough to chase off the sandman.

It was infuriating. Every time she was about to finally get some sleep that beep would pull her back to wakefulness. Eventually it fed her up enough to the point where she actually expended the herculean effort to get up and kick the plug from the wall. Silence, blessed silence descended on the infirmary. Harri felt some vague sense of satisfaction as she was FINALLY able to get some rest. She curled up in that comfy chair, half remembered lullabies taking her off to the land of nod.

* * *

When Harri woke at some point later, she stood and started to work out the kinks from sleeping in such a cramped position. Blurry memories started to surface as she glanced at the body on the gurney beside her. Memories of an amazing night, drunken bragging, and even drunker hover sledding. She vividly recalled the performances last night, both public and private. She wasn't entirely sure what had happened to him later, but clearly the porcuswine had stumbled on him at some point.

The family prickle was kept well fed, so they'd only nibbled on him. At least going by the bandages on his extremities and face it was just nibbling. Had they really been hungry, there wouldn't even be bones left. It was going to be a closed casket funeral regardless, and it was something of a miracle that he'd survived long enough to be taken to the infirmary. "Forever young," Harri said softly, patting what was left of a bandaged hand. She said a quick prayer for his immortal soul, then went to take a shower. She smelled indescribable.

When Harri came out she felt entirely more human, the fluffy white bathrobe by far the most comfortable thing against her skin all day. There was a maid waiting outside when she emerged, who nervously informed her that Mother was waiting for her. Harri threw on some clothes quickly and jogged over to the office. She paused outside, taking a moment to fix her hair as she tried to get her thoughts in order. With a deep breath she set her expression and walked in.

Mother was standing in the middle of the room, brooding with her attention fixed on the starmap inlaid in the wall. That was bad. Harri tried not to let her nerves show as she stood and waited to be called on. "I want you to explain to me what happened last night, all of it," Lady Donna Ramey said, her voice deceptively mild.

Harri gulped then, but did her best to reconstruct events from her alcohol sodden memory. How she and Shiri had an enjoyable night. And how they'd started drinking. And then how things got very fuzzy, until waking a few hours ago beside the corpse. The whole while Harri wracked her brain, trying to see what action she'd done that might have Mother so coldly furious at her.

"Your mom walked in on you, while you were sleeping next to the body. Doesn't take a genius to realize you unplugged the life support machines. It seems she considered that boy as much family as you, so she is somewhat justified in being extremely emotional about it. She gave me an ultimatum. Either you go, or she goes."

Harri's face froze, her posture went stiff as those words sank in. This development was, how to put it? Sub-optimal? She blinked a few times, trying to frame her emotions and words correctly. "I'll miss Mommy, and I trust you'll have no objections if I donate a portion of my allowance to a trust for her? It should see her comforta"

Three years ago, the sudden right hook from her Mother would have laid her out clean. But she wasn't soft like that anymore. The motion triggered reflexes, and she brought up her left forearm to deflect the blow even while launching a fast jab herself that sank deep into Mother's breast. It made her bellow like an enraged boar, but that was about all it did. Even with Harri's guard up every punch her Mother threw staggered Harri back.

Mother brawled like she was back on the docks, and eventually one of her punches got through. The blow to the kidney made Harri's eyes water, and she lowered her guard for a moment to keep her other organs from similar bruises. It was enough for Mother's ham fists to dart in and close around Harri's neck. "You stupid cunt!" she hissed, ignoring the featherweight blows Harri delivered as she tried to get free. "How could you GET CAUGHT!" There was a terrible power in those hands as they closed tighter and tighter.

Harri's vision was going dark around the edges. For a moment she pondered letting that darkness close in entirely, but losing had never been part of her makeup. She would fight until the end. Her body arched back like a bow for a moment, and she kicked her Mother in the crotch with every bit of strength she could muster. The shock and pain made her fold up on herself, her bulldog face finally coming down in reach of Harri's hands. Harri couldn't see anything now, but she could feel where Mother's nose was. Where the eyes were. And she PUSHED.

Without the hands around her neck supporting her weight, Harri fell to the tile floor. Her face hit with a splat as she felt what might have been her cheek conform to the cold hard surface instead of it's more usual shape. She gasped hugely for breath as blood filled her mouth, possibly from her lip, or maybe from broken teeth. And to think she'd complained about her hangover earlier! Now she couldn't move, it was a struggle just to breath.

Mother was screaming and cursing as she lurched away, her hands blindly flailing. There was a loud crash of falling furniture before things slowly quieted down. Harri couldn't say anything even if she'd wanted to. Her face was bleeding so much it felt like she could drown in it. She coughed up a fragment of one of her teeth and tried to get up. One eye was swelling shut, to the point where even using a throw pillow to staunch the bleeding was excruciating. Her throat hurt with every slow breath, bruised where fingers had throttled her.

But she could stand. Mother had tripped over a divan and broken it's arm off. Harri didn't see any blood or other fluids coming from her eyes, so she hadn't managed to rupture either of them. Harri supposed that was good? Mother was moaning softly, curled up around her bruised groin. Harri picked up the broken furniture leg and poked her Mother in the leg with it a few times. "Get out of here." Mother panted. "You've got twenty-four hours to get off world. Or I send the Collections Department after you."

Right. Twenty-four hours to get off world, or she'd be worse than killed. She'd need most of that just to get to the spaceport and book passage. Harri grunted assent and slowly staggered her way down the hall. In her room she made a list of her most portable valuables and anything else she could carry for liquid funds. She threw a few small trinkets in the bag as well and started searching around the house for her skimmer. But instead she ran into the last people she wanted to meet.

There was a tearful group of carnies in the hall outside the infirmary. Some she recognized, most she didn't. For a moment there was silence between them, a dozen grief stricken adults all staring at a blood spattered teenaged girl with a duffel bag. The whole unfairness of it all suddenly sunk in to Harri. She began to sob and babble as much as she could with her injured throat, spittle and blood falling from her lips more than recognizable words. She tried to ensure they understood at least one word. "Accident." She kept repeating.

She hobbled away as best she could, ashamed of losing her composure. She didn't realize some of the carnie's had followed her to the conservatory until she heard a gasp behind her. They'd just seen the skimmer in the middle of the room. She tossed her bag over the rear seat, and was in the middle of cinching it down when she felt a hug from behind her. The sensation was heartbreakingly familiar, everything from the tenderness to the gentle warmth was just like Mommy's.

She turned in surprise, hoping against hope that everyone finally understood that this was all just a huge mistake. But… It wasn't. The woman had a face almost exactly like her Mommy's, only just a tad softer and younger. It was a face much like hers. It was true then. That boy, he'd been family. Somehow that redhead was her cousin. Their eyes met, and Harri couldn't take it anymore. She leaned over and puked, little but bile, mucus, and blood coming up. It was pure torture against the cuts in her lips and her broken teeth.

At least her heaving and retching had made everyone back up a bit, and she gunned the skimmer engine. Lift fans howled, and she backed the little craft out of the hole she'd made, then a sharp pivot sent her sailing out over the fields. She didn't look back as the only home she'd ever known receded into the distance. There wouldn't have been any point. And besides, she couldn't see out of one eye already and that made driving tricky as it was.

In her blood splattered, splintered office Lady Donna Ramey blinked away enough tears to see from one eye. The dust plume of the skimmer was already fading in the distance. She groaned and gingerly waddled over to her seat, her kitty hurting worse than it had during her first childbirth. By God that kid was a fighter! That's what made this whole mess so regrettable. But perhaps, something could be salvaged from it. She picked up the phone and said, "I need a priority sub-orbital dropship hop. And make sure at least one Special Collections team is on it."


	7. Chapter 7

**_"Out on your own, you fell into the life of a Merchant Guard, a position your Mother had arranged. You signed on as an enforcer for the Ramey Cartel, on paper providing security as caravans made trading runs between the Inner Sphere and the Periphery. "_**

 **Sweet Sixteen -2**  
 **Rockwellawan 3014**

* * *

Harri sat on a bench outside the Opal township spaceport offices, a bag of frozen edamame held up against her face. Her face had swollen up hugely, and she could no longer see a single thing through her left eye. Even slowly readjusting the bag just told her what she already knew, that her cheek bone had probably broken. Her tongue moved in her mouth, gingerly pressing against her remaining teeth to see if any more were loose. The broken incisor throbbed with every breath, just the humid air like drills against the exposed nerves. As hungry as she'd become on the long skimmer ride into town, she knew trying to eat the thawed beans would make it a hundred times worse.

Harri had no more tears to cry; not from the pain of her injuries nor the loss of her home. She'd already booked the next flight off world, so with luck she'd live to see the next day as something other than a transplant organ on its way to the Magistracy. She leaned back against the long bench she was sitting on, resting her head against the rough brick wall of the office. Her duffel lay in her lap, all her worldly possessions now enough to lift with the hand resting in her lap beneath it. She took in a breath and slowly let it go. All her fears, all her anger, all emotion.

Meditation was something Raju had tried to show her, a way of breathing that calmed the nerves and allowed a warrior to focus before battle. Being exiled into the frontier with nothing but her bag surely counted as the hardest battle of her life. Harri already had a ticket to Sacromont, which was a pit in every sense of the word. But she could sell some of the trinkets she had in her sack for enough starter capital to… what? There were any of a dozen business plans she could execute but doing so close to Mother was tantamount to suicide. Mercenary work was right out, as she had no desire to experience such a hardscrabble life as a dispossessed.

Harri breathed out her anxiety with a loud sigh. The future could wait, all that mattered was the now. She expanded her senses, sniffing the muggy soup that passed for air as the scents of boiled tarmac and engine fumes wafted across the spaceport. She could hear the rustle of the wind as it blew through her hair, the crinkle of the frozen package as it warmed up on her swollen skin. The sound of a hover truck coming closer. She tried her best to show no indication that she had noticed, her hand adjusting minutely under her duffel. It might not be someone she knew, it might be some random deck hand on shore leave heading out into what passed for town out here.

But it wasn't. When the hover truck started to reverse thrust Harri looked up, her only good eye locking on the woman in the back. The woman's inky black pixie cut hair was fluttering all over as the truck pulled to a halt beside her, sending a hot cloud of dust and grit washing over everything. Harri didn't bother to stand, because quite honestly she didn't have the energy to at the moment.

"Afternoon Chiquita," Harri called out. "I guess Mother sent you to kill me, huh?"

Chiquita laughed and hopped out of the truck, landing nimbly like a cat. Harri took some solace because at least her Mother's favorite bagman wasn't wearing armor or carrying a carbine.

"Kid, you are some piece of work," Chiquita purred, "I mean really. You don't do anything by halves. Kill your cousin on accident twice, after fucking his brains out. Damn near blind Lady Ramey in a fist fight. And then cook up some bullshit story that has those dumb carnies eating out of your hand. They forgive you, you know? They think that you're doing this out of some great and noble grief."

"The grief is pretty real from where I'm sitting," Harri grunted. "Do you have any idea how much my face hurts right now?"

Chiquita reached into a pocket with exaggerated care and took out a couple folded printouts. She casually flicked them at Harri, where they hit her right over her heart. "Pity your mom knows you better than that. There's the official story. You and the boy were celebrating your birthday and had a terrible skimmer accident. He didn't survive and you suffered critical injuries. You're being transported to the Magistracy for medical care for the foreseeable future."

At the mention of her destination, Harri tensed up, but Chiquita shook her head and raised her hands in surrender. "You're not being sold for parts, quite the opposite. Your Mother has decided that this is a good opportunity for you to become better acquainted with the details of the family business. You're booking passage to Lyreton, where you'll meet up with the Collections Department ship "Pay Day Loan." It's a good ship, and I'm sure you'll get along with the captain. She's almost as crazy as you are." Now that Harri had relaxed a little, Chiquita sat beside the young girl on the bench and offered her a set of tickets.

"So that's it then?" Harri said softly. "I'm going to spend the rest of my life hunting down bond jumpers and deadbeats." She sighed and leaned back against the bench rest again. She idly took the bag of beans from her face and shook it a bit, getting some still cold ones to rest against her face. They both winced as she fiddled with her ice. "I suppose it's better than being sold to an ice mine brothel. Instead of being stuck in a hole in the ground for months at a time getting fucked over, I'll be stuck in a ship."

"Hey, look on the bright side kid," Chiquita said happily. "You get steady pay. You get a commission on each recovery. You learn the ropes. And maybe 10 years from now, when everything's blown over and no one remembers who fed who to the hogs, you can come back from your medical convalescence. Maybe your Mom will even speak to you again cause I gotta say, I've never seen Danielle that mad before. Not even after that time one of your brothers stole your doll, and you made Junior talk."

Harri laughed a little, then moaned as the motion moved the broken bones in her face. "Damn it Chiquita, don't make me laugh when my face is like this…" She brought up both hands to help hold the cold bag against her face, and Chiquita breathed out a small sigh herself.

"I'll go along with it," Harri said after a minute. "It's better than any plan I've been able to come up with yet anyway. Go out, see the stars, and audit the wicked." Harri's lips quirked up just the tiniest bit, the most she could smile without inviting a fresh bout of pain. "I just hope the Pay Day Loan has windows."

"Now that I'm sure you're not going to shoot me Harri, I have a few extra bits of paperwork for you." Chiquita whistled and the truck driver brought over a clipboard and a pen. "So, need you to sign and fingerprint here, here, and here." One by one she walked the half blinded Harri through signing her inheritance away. "And then this last one I need you to sign is a freight claim." Harri blinked as she looked at the shipping manifest. "Consider it a birthday present from your Mother. She never really liked it anyway." Chiquita smiled as she tucked it away into Harri's duffel, revealing the Sunbeam that had been in her lap the whole time.

Harri's smile slowly climbed up into the realm of painfully broad, as she discovered the shipment of "Agricultural Tractors" she was shepherding to Lyreton weighed slightly over 45 tons. Chiquita stood up and waved to her driver to start up the truck. "Good luck kid." She said gently. "Your Mother will be in touch. But she already gave me my orders. If I ever see you on Rockwellawan again, I'm supposed to "take care of you" if you know what I mean."

She turned her back to Harri to hop into the truck bed again, revealing the Sternsnacht that had been holstered there. Chiquita smiled cordially to Harri as the lift fans fluttered her hair around her face, and as the truck drove off she slowly drew one finger from side to side across her throat. Harri waved as the truck pulled away, her mood much improved by knowing that no matter what lay ahead, she'd not face it alone.


End file.
